A handful of news outlets purposely excluded from a White House press briefing Friday expressed immediate concern online over the Trump administration’s decision to curtail access even as a former White House press secretary urged the media to “calm down.”

Journalists from The New York Times, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, Politico and BuzzFeed were among the news organizations selectively left out of an on-the-record press meeting with Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, the Times and others reported shortly after the meeting.

“We’re going to aggressively push back. We’re just not going to sit back and let, you know, false narrative, false stories get out there,” Spicer told reporters inside the briefing.

“Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple admnsitrations of different parties,” New York Times editor Dean Baquet said in a statement. “Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.”

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/835216757484838913

Other news organizations and groups also criticized the White House for denying access to some outlets while granting it to different ones. Among those allowed access to the meeting were Breitbart News, the One America News Network, the Washington Times, ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, the Times reported.

BuzzFeed News’ editor in chief, Ben Smith, said “we won’t let those antics distract us from continuing to cover this administration fairly and aggressively.”

https://twitter.com/Carrasquillo/status/835218599430275074

Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary under President George W. Bush took a different view, saying that the press secretary may have acted unwisely but that aides exclude media members from gaggles “all the time.”

https://twitter.com/AriFleischer/status/835216990088343552

Journalists from the Associated Press and Time magazine were said to have boycotted the press briefing in solidarity with their colleagues who got blocked. One by one, news outlets offered public reactions.

Associated Press director of media relations, Lauren Easton, explained why the AP chose not to participate in the briefing without colleagues from other outlets.

"The AP believes the public should have as much access to the president as possible," she said.

A Politico reporter flashed back to an earlier Spicer interview where the issue of media access was discussed.

https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/835219520541364225

In a statement on Friday, The Wall Street Journal said it “will not participate in such closed briefings in the future.”

https://twitter.com/Hadas_Gold/status/835228072144171009

Joanne Lipman, Gannett’s chief content editor and editor in chief of the USA Today, said in a statement that Friday’s handling of the press briefing is “at odds with the best traditions of the White House and our democracy.”

“It does not serve President Trump or the American people well,” Lipman added.

https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/835279591543562244

Los Angeles Times editor Davan Maharaj tweeted a photo of a T-shirt with the words “we will not shut up.”

https://twitter.com/DavanMaharaj/status/835211965127524352

The president of the White House Correspondents’ Association — a trade group that lobbies on behalf of the press in the White House — issued a similar reaction.

“The WCHA board is protesting against how today’s gaggle is being handled by the White House,” WHCA president Jeff Mason said. “We encourage the organizations that were allowed in to share the material with others in the press corps who were not.”

https://twitter.com/whca/status/835214334544478208

Lynn Walsh, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, also weighed in a statement that reads, in part, “by not allowing the news organizations access, the White House was effectively not allowing them to ask questions and hold the administration accountable for whatever information was shared.”

https://twitter.com/spj_tweets/status/835240018872524802

Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for the New York Times, tweeted that the Treasury Department under the Obama administration once tried to block Fox News from briefings, which was similarly met with objections from other outlets.